


Daffodils

by imsfire



Series: The Jem Chronicles [1]
Category: The Town (2010)
Genre: Gen, Imagined Backstory
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-15
Updated: 2014-02-15
Packaged: 2018-01-12 13:17:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,379
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1186802
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/imsfire/pseuds/imsfire
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The first step on the road to the Fenway Park job</p>
            </blockquote>





	Daffodils

**Author's Note:**

> "A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step" - whether it is a journey to success and happiness, or a journey to a life of violence and crime, and an early death.  
> Every factor would have been there already to make the final destination pretty much inevitable, but I imagine just the same there must have been a moment in Jem's life when he took that first conscious step on his journey...  
> I haven't read the original book "Prince of Thieves" on which "The Town" is based, so my apologies if some of this is off-canon.

He saw the old man as he left, waiting quietly just inside the entrance, by the driveway lined with daffodils. A convenient meeting, since he’d never be able to make out that Fergie didn’t have a perfectly legitimate reason to be there. Cemeteries were always full of flowers, after all, and florists brought them. Big-ass flowers, bouquets and wreaths and Love-You-Mom in massed white orchids.  
His flowers were never going to look like much in that company. But at least they were planted in the ground. They’d be there again next spring, and the one after.  
He’d known the Florist would show up sooner or later. Fergie liked to be in control of everything. Why would this be any different?  
He wasn’t looking forward to it. It would have been good to be able to say Get-it-the-fuck-over-with, ya son-of-a-bitch.  
He nodded quickly to the old man instead.  
Fergie glanced his way and nodded back, for all the world as though it was just a greeting in passing. A wordless acknowledgement, one man to another.  
Perhaps it wasn’t going to be today; perhaps he could go home and make a sandwich, if there was any bread left. Just pretend it was a day like any other.  
He had already passed when the old man cleared his throat and said  
“Jeames Coughlin. Good afternoon te ye.”  
Fuck.  
He turned, trying to be polite. Hating the fact he had to. Hating everything.  
“Hi. How ya doin’?”  
The lined, harsh face studied his, and smiled suddenly. Christ, had Fergie ever been young? He’d looked seventy for as long as Jem could remember; at least the last ten years.  
“I’m well, thank ye, young man. Thank ye fer askin’.”  
“Uh. Good.”  
“I saw ye payin’ yer respects jest now. It must be jest about a year now, no?”  
What fuckin’ business of yours is it? Jem wanted to say. You know the day as well as I, you prick. And how come you’ve never lost that fuckin’ ugly accent after all these years?  
He said curtly “Yeah. Year ago last Friday.”  
It was a year and a week since she died; exactly a year since the funeral.  
He remembered the garden at the hospice, golden with daffodils in the spring light. “Aren’t they beautiful?” she’d said, the last time she was strong enough to go outside. “Luminous, like the sun’s all over the grass…” He’d stood beside the wheelchair, raging at his helplessness, hating the place and the spring, and her terrible thinness, and the sunlight; and suddenly she had clutched his hands in her frail ones. “Listen to me, James, I need ya to listen, I need ya to promise me somethin’… Look after your sistah. She can be so dumb sometimes, she scares me. She’s such a kid still. Take care of her, don’t let her go off the rails. And I need ya to take care of Dougie. Ya know how he’s almost like anothah son to me. He’s a good lad. But ya the man of the family now, James. Ya my bright boy. Ya smart, ya could go places. Ya young, ya got time, ya’ll have the chance to make me proud. Ya’ll take care of them, I know ya will…”  
She was looking up at him with huge eyes. He had tried to keep his face frozen, hard like iron. Wanting to scream with rage, wanting to howl like a thrashed dog, and wanting her never to know. Never to know he couldn’t be man enough to do this. He was fifteen. He was a fuckin’ man.  
Sixteen, now.  
A whole year of his life, clawed past and dragged off and gone, now. What to show for it? They were all still alive, still in the house, still eating. None of them sick, none of them in jail, none of them dead. The bulbs he’d planted on her grave in the fall had pushed on through and their sunshine was splashed all around her now, back there in the cemetery.  
Fergie’s hard face looked sincere; kindly, even. He said “Ah, sonny, it was a feckin’ tragedy.”  
Jem fidgeted, looking down at his feet. Scuffed sneakers kicking at a scuffed path. He wanted to have the nerve to say Get-the-fuck-on, say yer piece, ya fucker! But no-one spoke to Fergie that way. Including, it would seem, Jem Coughlin. He hated the old man for that.  
“I hope ye won’t mind me sayin’ this, son. I’ve bin watchin’ ye this last yer. Ye’ve impressed me, Jeames. I heard a lot o’ people sayin’ ye wouldn’t cope. It’s a hell of a lot of responsibility for a young man. I’ve seen ye put yer head down and square yer shoulders ter this job. I’ve seen ye prove them all wrong. Ye’ve faced up ter yer responsibilities like a man. I’ve bin impressed. Moved, even. Yer mother would have bin proud of ye.”  
She had said that. “Ya’ll make me proud of ya, I know ya will.” He remembered it; he could still feel the vivid clutching of her fingers, could still hear her thin voice forcing out words. He wondered if the sound in his mind would ever fade.  
“So, tell me, Jeames, what are yer plans fer the future?”  
“Uh… I guess… I dunno. I guess I get a job.”  
Fuck, it sounded so lame. So dumb, feeling like some half-assed kid in front of the hardest bastard in the Town.  
“What have ye bin livin’ on, son?” Fergie sounded concerned. Jem prickled, rising to the goad of kindness.  
“We’ve been okay. We’ve been a’right.”  
I don’t want ya working for the Florist. I’m here and not in that big hospital because I don’t want to be in his debt. I don’t want ya and Krista to feel obligated to that man!  
He stood breathing hard as the memory gripped. For the past twelve months he’d known a day would come when Fergie would try to enlist him. He’d struggled to work out a way of avoiding the conversation; or of winning it, if it was unavoidable in the end. He’d lost sleep over its intractability. Whatever Fergie wanted to control, Fergie got. Yet he seemed to have gained something almost like the upper hand now, somehow, without even trying. The old man sounded apologetic. The eyes looking down at him out of that hard, lined face were kindly and sad. Fergie said quietly “That’s okay, Jeames. I didn’t mean ter pry.”  
Jem took a quick breath and said “I wanna be independent. I wanna be able to stand on my own feet. I can look after my sistah.”  
“Good fer ye. That’s the way ter think. So – are ye plannin’ on goin’ back ter high school, then?”  
Jeezus fuckin’ Christ. As well ask if he planned on becoming an astronaut. High school. His confidence sickened at the thought. Perhaps he could… He knew he ought to, if he was seriously going to try and get some kind of work this year, instead of simply selling stuff. Some of which was his to sell…  
Ya my bright boy. Ya smart, ya could go places…  
Fuckin’ high school, fuckin’ teachers. They’d dissed and dismissed him since forever. They saw nothing but his accent and the streets of Charlestown when they looked at him. Not someone’s bright boy who could go places. And now he’d have a year to catch up, as well.  
“Ah, Jeames,” Fergie said unhappily. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean ter push yer buttons… Listen, sonny, I hope ye won’t take this amiss, but I want ye ter know; if there’s somethin’ I can do, ye only have ter ask…”  
Jem stilled his pounding breath and looked up, quick and cold, into the protective brown eyes. “We’re okay,” he said again. And then, because it had to be said “I don’t want to work for ya, Mistah Colm. I promised my mom I wouldn’t get Krista and me indebted to ya. Like I said, I wanna stand on my own feet.”  
Fergie flinched, actually blanched and looked really hurt for a moment. “Indebted? Jesus Christ… Is that why yer mother wouldn’t let me pay her hospital fees, why she went ter that place full o’ feckin’ nuns? Sonny, sonny, that wasn’t about debts and obligations, it was about neighbours helpin’ one another! It was about community! Ah, I am so sorry. I had no idea she saw it that way…”  
The bony memory clutched and clung in Jem’s mind and the memory voice gasped sharply. His own remembered voice said “Yer in pain! Why aren’t they givin’ ya enough stuff? Mom!”  
“They’re givin’ me plenty. This thing in my neck – it gives me a dose every half hour. It’s morphine. It’s plenty strong enough for – oh…”  
Her pupils had widened, she had lost the thread of her words and simply hung on to him, panting. And there had been nothing he could do except hold her hands in his and watch, and be strong enough for her.  
“I promised her I’d be independent,” he told the Florist. “I promised.”  
Fergie sighed. “And ye should keep yer word, sonny. A promise like that is sacred. Ye should respect it; and I respect ye fer keepin’ to it. Well, then… I had somethin’ I’d wanted ter talk ter ye about. But I guess that means this conversation is over. Ye won’t be carin’ ter know about the job.”  
“No… I guess not.”  
He turned to go. The whole driveway into the cemetery was lined with daffodils, and the sun had just come out. A wave of bemused cheerfulness washed over Jem for a second. He hadn’t a fuckin’ clue how he was going to make a life for himself and Krista, without Fergie’s sponsorship. But he’d kept his promise. He was free.  
The old man said to his back “Would ye know of anyone else?”  
“Anyone else what?”  
He had to turn back. Free of him or not, this was still a man he didn’t want to antagonise. He looked at the Florist, and the pale mile of gravestones and wilted cut-flowers behind him, the wintry grass, endless rows of grey and white stones…  
“Anyone else who might be lookin’ fer a job? It’s only a one-off, a small thing. It’s completely legit and legal. But the lad I’d normally use has gotten himself in some trouble over somethin’ else entirely and is – well – unavailable at present. The only reason I thought of ye is because it’s a young man’s job. I can’t do it meself, too old and stiff! It needs someone who’s smart and quick – quick in his wits and quick on his feet. But it isn’t permanent work or anything. Jest somethin’ that would put a bit of easy cash in a young man’s hand. A one-time thing.”  
A one-time thing. A bit of easy cash.  
“How much?” he asked. It was a fair question. The job was legit and legal, the old man had just said so. If he did know someone interested, it was the first thing he’d need to be able to tell them. Even though he didn’t. He really didn’t.  
“Oh, it’s hard ter say, exactly, till the job’s done. Two, maybe two and a half.”  
“Two and a half?” Jem asked, frowning.  
“Thousand,” Fergie said calmly. Thighsand, he pronounced it, in his fucking ugly voice. “Maybe as much as three, but I wouldn’t like ter promise it… So, do ye know of anyone who’d be interested?”  
A one-time thing. Legal and legit. Not about debts and obligations.  
He could see the one spot of living gold, up in the distance, where his daffodils were nodding in the spring breeze. On the grave. He swallowed. Two and a half thousand.  
“Uh. I might. I need to think about – I mean, I need to find out.”  
“Well, thank ye fer thinking about it. Let me know if ye – find anyone…”  
When he got back to the house he found Krista sitting on the stoop, shivering and pouting at him.  
“Where’ve ya been?”  
“At the cemetery.”  
“I forgot my keys. Why’dja take so long? I’ve been freezin’ my ass off!”  
“Ya shoulda worn yer fleece!”  
He let them both in and wandered through into the kitchen.  
“Where’s Dougie?”  
“Extra practice. His try-out is next month.”  
“Uh-huh… Go and get somethin’ warm on, ya said ya were freezin’!”  
He checked the refrigerator. Some beers, a coke, an end of cheese, half a loaf. No milk. He’d used the last of the eggs that morning. Two wrinkled tomatoes and a jar of strawberry jelly in the salad drawer.  
He checked the cupboard. Heinz beans. Fuckin’ beans on toast. Again.  
He was manhandling the crappy right-handed can opener clumsily when Krista reappeared, huddled in one of their mother’s old sweaters. She had gotten thinner, lately. She said pettishly “How was Mom?”  
Jem’s fist clenched on the can opener as if it were a thing that could be killed. He forced stillness into muscles that ached to lash out; at her, at his own fucking uselessness, at the stove and the can and the cheap shitty food, and everything.  
“What kind of a fuckin’ stupid question is that? How’s Mom? She’s still in the fuckin’ ground, is how!”  
He fought the beans open and emptied them into the pan, and cut himself on the sawed metal edge. Bled into his and Krista’s food. Didn’t tell her.  
Two days later, the weather had brightened from chill to a real spring warmth, and Krista and Doug were sitting on the stoop in the sun, with daffodils round them in the front yard. When he looked out they were playing poker for M&Ms. Jeezus, they were such kids still, the both of them.  
Just kids, trying to live on M&Ms and canned beans on toast.  
He picked up the phone and took it into the back room. Sat staring at it for a long time. But, fuck it, what the hell else could he do? He was a man, he had to act like one.  
He dialled, waited, took a deep breath. “Hi, can I speak to Fergie? Yeah… It’s Jem Coughlin. Tell him it’s about that job we talked about.”


End file.
